Preparing for Wit & Wisdom
As our students returned to school this year, our Middle School and High School students returned to an amazing new learning space, the brand new Pentucket Regional Middle-High School. The building itself, with the dining commons pictured below, was not the only “new” thing our students in Grades 7 & 8 encountered. During the 2021-2022, Pentucket adopted the Wit & Wisdom English Language Arts Curriculum in grades K-6, and we previously shared on this blog the reasoning behind the implementation of Wit & Wisdom. Due to the success we had at the elementary level with this skillful implementation of this high quality curriculum, this year, Pentucket Middle School implemented Wit & Wisdom in grades 7 & 8.
If you walk through the middle school English classrooms, some of the things you will observe are students engaging in rich discussion, deep dives into vocabulary, students grappling with complex language, summarizing, examining the main idea, and analyzing characters.
To prepare for the implementation of the new curriculum, all seventh and eighth grade English and special education teachers participated in professional development in June co-facilitated by Coordinator of Curriculum and Instruction, Robin Doherty and Jennifer Hogan, K-6 Literacy and Humanities Coordinator. The focus of the professional development was on what Wit & Wisdom is, how it is different from previous balanced literacy and workshop programs, why Pentucket chose it, and how to plan using backwards design to maximize the structure of each lesson. Additionally, in teams, teachers analyzed the first module by completing the module study protocol to prepare to teach.
In August, during the district’s professional development days, ELA middle school and special education received additional training that recapped major themes from June’s training, but equally important, provided opportunity for teachers to dissect the different parts of a Wit & Wisdom lesson and how each essential question, focusing question, and lesson activity connects to the major learning goals of the module.
During September’s early release training, ELA teachers focused on how, if possible, to adapt or to modify a lesson and how to embed scaffolding into lessons. The professional development also addressed challenges teachers were facing implementing a new curriculum and how to address them. Professional development for teachers will continue throughout the school year.
Each Wit & Wisdom module includes five types of assessments that are formative and summative all building toward the end of module text. The graphic below presents the types and frequency of the assessments.
Each formative and summative assessment builds to the end of module task (EOM). The EOM asks students to demonstrate their understanding and learning of the content and major skills assessed throughout the module. In seventh and eight grade the EOM tasks assess students narrative, augment, and/or informative writing skills. This is where the writing development is connected to the skills of comprehending complex text, that was part of a weeks long process of engaging on conceptually related topics through multiple texts.
Complex Language
Natalie Wexler, who is the author of the Knowledge Gap, which was used as a book study for our elementary staff preparing to implement Wit and Wisdom a few years ago, has recently published a new article. In her most recent article, To Help Students Read and Write, Shower Some Love on the Sentence: The complex syntax of written language is often a stumbling block, she really addresses the fact that the explicit teaching of complex text is how we can really boost student comprehension. Even more so, that if we connect the syntax and sentence structure from a text to student writing, we will boost student writing by helping them to use more advanced language structures that they are encountering in the text
Scaffolding Support
Learning Ally as a way to scaffold access for students who may find some of the complex text challenging. Among several of the supports and solutions Learning Ally provides, the access to the audio books is the feature that we intend to use with some of our students. While we have had a few select students in the past use Learning Ally, we now have a school wide subscription, which allows us to manage which students may need the support at different times.
Modules
Our 7th graders have started in Module one which has students engaged in a study around the “Identity in the Middle Ages”. Students are introduced to the daily lives of medieval Europeans.
Immersed in the Middle Ages (500–1500 AD), students focus on identity and character and the impact of society on both. In addition to three core texts on this topic, students must also read smaller selections to connect to the topic, expanding the volume of conceptually related texts. Some are challenging texts and require the students to use the accumulated knowledge from multiple texts and write using information from multiple texts.
As the 7th Graders move into the 2nd module the texts and topics switch to the memoir genre and style and delve into the following informational and literature texts: Farewell to Manzanar; Code Talker, “Navajo Code Talkers;” “Pearl Harbor and World War II;” “Relocation Camps;” “World War II Internment of Japanese Americans;” Pearl Harbor Headlines
In this second module, Americans All, students will explore how we react when faced with war. The World War II experiences of Japanese Americans and Native Americans show how the war impacted Americans in different ways. Students ask, How did World War II affect individuals?
Moving through the module, building their knowledge of these different perspectives of World War II, the students will write in response to these questions:
“What does being Navajo mean to the protagonist of Code Talker?”
“How does Ned’s Navajo identity provide strength during times of challenge?”
“What did the Wakatsukis experience during World War II and how did it affect them?”
“How did World War II affect individuals?”
Our eighth graders first Module focuses on “The Poetics & Power of Storytelling.” Using the core text, “The Crossover” by Kwame Alexander, students explore how storytelling can express one’s personal, cultural, and/or social experiences. Additionally, in the module, students analyze the role speeches, paintings, websites, images, and videos express oneself. Students compare and contrast, create their own poems, and analyze figurative language, and text language.
As we close out the first several weeks of school, the 8th Graders have really found their voice and connection with the book “The Crossover.” This book, written in prose, has afforded students to explore their own writing of poetry.
The writing students were prompted to create are all considered extended metaphor list poems. They compare Josh Bell (the main character) to anything of the students’ choosing, so long as they can support it. From one of the teachers who was tremendously impressed with the student writing:
“I loved the way many of my students were able to compare a basketball game to weather, a natural disaster or an animal. Many of their pieces brought tears to my eyes.”
Below are two student examples of poems that are part of the assessment in the first module, all based on The Crossover.
Our 8th graders continue to advance in different content and text types throughout the year. Module two in eighth grade moves on to the “Great War” focusing on how literature and art illuminate the effects of World War I. Students examine the effects and attitudes of WWI and write expository essays. The core text in Module 2 is: “All Quiet on the Western Front” by Erich Maria Remarque, a German veteran of World War I. The text provides the students with a very different perspective on the content, and for many, it is the first time they consider some of the historical events from a different perspective than what they may have learned.
To help with the building of background knowledge and providing more context to the history and timeline, it is supported with film excerpts from the movie All Quiet on the Western Front. Paired and complimentary texts include: “The Peace President Goes to War”, “The War to End All Wars”, “Fighting From the Trenches,” “The Forgotten Female Shell-Shock Victims of World War I”, “Your country needs you’: why did so many volunteer in 1914?”, “The teenage soldiers of World War One”, "Gassed", "Soldiers Playing Cards", “Dulce et Decorum Est”, and “In Flanders Fields”.
Module three becomes more complex as it introduces students to Shakespeare, reading “ A Midsummer’s Nights Dream” and focuses on the question, “What is love?” For an eighth grader, it is a question they are likely trying to determine themselves and yet through the texts, they are provided with opportunities to explore how “Love” has been written about in different ways. Students read about the topic of love while analyzing tone, word choice, and author’s arguments. Along with the core text, students engage with the following supplementary texts: “What is love? Five Theories on the Greatest Emotion of All”, "The Birthday", "The Arnolfini Portrait", Starry Night", “In the Brain", "Romantic Love Is Basically an Addiction”, “EPICAC”, "March of Progress", and "All I Want is You".
As the year moves ahead, we hope to capture more of the student learning experience and share both student perspectives of the text and their writing. The curriculum asks a great deal of students and teachers, but with a goal of challenging the students’ thinking, building more background knowledge and pushing them to express their understanding and analysis through their writing. This is what a high quality curriculum should do and the outcomes are to be celebrated soon.